Foster care and adoption; toddlers to young adults; it's all here-- faith and humor meet as this mom of four chronicles the joy and heartbreak of motherhood.

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

November, 2005: Thanksgiving in the hospital

I had 12 bags of
groceries to unload from the car. Thanksgiving was two days away and we were
hosting dinner for 22. As I carried the first bags into the house, I looked at
the toys everywhere, the laundry to sort, the pile of mail and school papers on
the kitchen table. I decided it would take every free hour from that moment
until Thanksgiving just to get the house in presentable shape and the food
cooked and ready.

Bag
by bag, I brought the groceries in. Two-year-old Jamilet stood next to the car
in the driveway and watched me walk through the garage andinto the house makingthe trips.

I
told her it would be lunchtime right after I brought in all the groceries, and
went into the house. One more bag to go.I left her leaning casually against the car door.

“Time
for lunch,” I said to Jamilet, when I came back to the car.I looked down at her. She was holding an
empty bottle of prescription allergy pills, the cap in one hand, the bottle in
the other. Where had she gotten that? I felt alarm rising within me.

“Where
did you get that bottle?”

“Bottle
in car.”

“Open
your mouth.” I swept her mouth with my fingers. There were no pills in her
mouth, but just inside her lip was a white powdery substance. I swallowed.

“Did
you eat the pills?”

“Empty,”
she said.

I
wanted to believe her. I grabbed the bottle, carried her in and called Poison
Control.

“How
many did she eat?” the woman on the other end asked me.

“I’m
not sure she ate any,” I said. “The bottle might have been empty. I’m not even
sure why the bottle was in the car.”

“Is
it possible she ate 10 pills?” the woman asked.

“It’s
possible. I just don’t know. She was alone for about a minute.”

“For
her weight, 10 pills is lethal. You need to take her to the nearest emergency
room. I’ll call ahead so they know you’re coming.”

I
looked at Jamilet.

“Did
you eat these?” I asked, again.

“Empty,”
she said.

Empty.
I strapped her into her car seat. She was probably right, but ten pills were
lethal and where had the powdery residue in her mouth come from?

At
the emergency room, they took her temperature and pulse. All were normal, but
it suddenly became obvious to me just how serious the situation could become.
The nurse on duty said the toxic dose for Jamilet’s weight was really more like
five pills than ten. I called Bill, and he left work and sped over. Jamilet
stuck by her story as Bill, a doctor, then two nurses, came in to ask her if
she ate some pills. The final nurse even tried to lead her into saying she ate
the pills.

“This
bottle is empty because you ate the pills up, isn’t it?” the nurse said,
smiling. “Were they yummy?”

“Empty,”
Jamilet said.

Still,
as a precaution, the E.R. staff said she should be hooked up to an E.K.G. and
be observed for six hours — the amount of time it could take the drugs to
activate in her system.

As
they put the stickers with wires all over my baby’s chest and back, the nurse
said she would bring in some charcoal for Jamilet to drink. Just in case, she
said. The charcoal would absorb the medicine.I blinked back my tears. I was so sorry I had left her alone. Sorry that
Bill or I had been careless enough to leave an allergy bottle—even an empty
one—in the car. Sorry that I was putting her through six hours of observation
when she had trouble sitting still for a ten-minute book. And to be honest, I
was a little sorry for myself, too. With no time to spare before Thanksgiving,
I would be spending the next six hours in the E.R. with a child who was
possibly not sick at all.

An
hour went by, with Jamilet sitting quietly on my lap, unusually calm, hooked up
to the E.K.G. She cooperatively drank the charcoal drink they gave her,
flavored, the nurse said, with six tablespoons of chocolate sauce. After an
hour and a half with no change, I was even more convinced she had not eaten any
pills. She fell asleep on my chest, and I eased my way back into the bed, and
pulled my feet up. For two hours, she slept — her usual naptime. Not wanting to
wake her with the T.V., I simply lay in bed and listened to her breathing. She
was warm against my body, and looked smaller than usual in her tiny hospital
gown. Normally, during Jamilet’s nap, I rush to get a hundred things done—phone
interviews for articles, writing, editing, cleaning. And now it was naptime and
she was asleep on my chest in a hospital. Bill was grading 8th grade
essays on a chair nearby.

As she slept, it
occurred to me that she and I had never done this before. I had cradled newborn
Jacob and Liam in my arms and held them in wonder as they slept in the hospital
after they were born. Jamilet and I had never had that time. She came to us at
age 13 months as a foster child, already a good napper and sleeper. There had
never been a reason to hold her as she slept. But now there was.

As
she slept, I rubbed her skin, that unbelievably soft baby skin. Trapped in an
E.R. room, two days before Thanksgiving, I understood that this was my time to
experience newborn Jamilet.

And
so I did. I let go of all the things I had to do, and gave thanks for the
emergency that was not. I marveled at my sleeping daughter. I fingered her
curls, and gently touched her lips. I watched her heartbeat on the monitor as I
felt it against my chest. I prayed for her — thanking God for the gift of her
life. Thanking God that our afternoon at the hospital was all for nothing. For
nothing at all.

About Me

Annemarie writes locally and nationally on foster care, adoption, parenting and spirituality. She is responsible for the content in At Home with Our Faith (circulation 80,000), which has won the First Place award in its category from the Associated Church Press for three consecutive years. Her Training Wheels column has appeared in the Milwaukee Catholic Herald since 2002 and most of these blogs appeared first in her Training Wheels column or as a chapter of her book, Discovering Motherhood (Ambassador Press, 2006). She is married to Bill, with four children (two biological, two adopted), and works in a job-share position at Johnson Controls as director of Corporate Programs in Diversity and Public Affairs.